


MikoTata week prompt 1: Alone/Tatara's death

by modorenai



Category: K (Anime)
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-08
Updated: 2015-04-08
Packaged: 2018-03-21 22:14:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3706073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/modorenai/pseuds/modorenai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Various members of HOMRA try to deal with their grief in the aftermath of Tatara's death.</p>
            </blockquote>





	MikoTata week prompt 1: Alone/Tatara's death

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this awhile back in an attempt to take part in MikoTata week on tumblr last year, but failed miserably because I am lazy and had no inspiration for the rest of the prompts. *cries*
> 
> I do intend to eventually finish up the rest of the prompts, and maybe expand on this one as well, but in the meantime I thought I might as well post this here in an attempt to try to motivate me to write more MikoTata fics. This pairing seriously needs more love. QAQ

The night that Tatara dies, Anna spends most of it curled up on Mikoto's lap, clinging tightly to him like a drowning girl desperately holding on to a piece of driftwood, her hands gripping the front of his shirt tightly as she rests her head gently against his chest. She can hear the steady thrum of his heartbeat and feel the rise and fall of his chest as he breathes in and out, ever so slowly and carefully in measured breaths, as he struggles to contain the boiling flames within him. His rage burns fast and furious, yearning to destroy everything in its wake, and she can feel his desire for revenge simmering hotly beneath his skin and within his veins. She can feel a tongue of flame slowly creeping out of its cage and when she shifts to tighten her grasp on Mikoto's shirt, she can feel the flame retreat reluctantly to its cage.

They stay that way together for a long time, her pain feeding and melding into his until she begins to forget where her pain ends and where Mikoto's begins. She can feel herself sinking down, down, down into a pool of flame and anguish, can feel the currents of his despair crashing louder and louder against each surge of blazing fire that twists and turns within him. Soon she can no longer tell whether it is she who is preventing Mikoto from being swept away by the waves of flames that threaten to spill over from within and engulf him, or if he is the steady presence that is the only thing that is keeping her from drowning. All she knows is that she can hear the silent cry in Mikoto's heart.

Soon her eyelids begin to grow heavy from the weight of all her unshed tears and unspoken emotions _(or is it his unshed tears and unspoken emotions?)_. As she begins to drift off to sleep, there's a knocking at the door and she hears a click of an opening door and the low murmur of voices as Mikoto and the newcomer exchange quiet words. The tread of the newcomer's feet is heavy, burdened as he is with the additional weight in his arms, and the floorboards creak in protest as he shuffles forward to gently lay his burden on the bed. Someone is peeling her gently off Mikoto (Kusanagi, she thinks, judging from his usual warm and steady glow that didn't burn quite as brightly as Mikoto's), and she can feel Mikoto pull away slowly from her as he walks over to the bed in silence. Before the darkness completely overtakes her, a single thought drifts into her mind: _Tatara has come home._

====================

The day after Tatara's body disappears from the earth in a sea of flames, Kusanagi goes out to buy a new phone with a new number. The first person he calls on his shiny new gadget is the Tundra woman. 

She picks up his call after two rings with a clipped, _Awashima Seri speaking. May I know who is calling?  
_

He responds in his usual cheerfully teasing manner, expecting to hear the usual irritated click of her tongue as she realises who is on the other end on the line. But it doesn't come, and he knows that she's already heard about what has happened. _News travels fast_ , he thinks. 

He hears her voice soften slightly as she offers him her condolences, and for a fleeting moment Kusanagi remembers bitterly that he had always joked that he would pay any price to have the Tundra woman thaw out towards him. But he hadn't known the price to pay would be so high that it would bankrupt him, and now all he can think is that he would rather suffer the frostbite of a thousand freezing barbs if only he could gain back the warmth that had been taken from him, from Mikoto, from Anna, from the whole of HOMRA. He had never believed in alchemy and now he never would because he now knows for sure that there is no such thing as equivalent trade.

He's not quite sure what he says to her in response or even if he says anything at all, and the silence lies thick on them like snow. He can feel his heart growing colder with every second that ticks by, bringing with it a snowflake of silence that falls and settles in a heavy blanket around his shoulders. Through the numbness, he can tell that she is searching for something to say to break through the cloud of quiet that threatens to choke them. 

When her question comes, he isn't caught off guard - quite the contrary in fact, since he'd expected it, had even prepared a jaunty answer that would serve as an adequate enough response without revealing too much. He had rehearsed what he would say and how he would say it and why he was saying it to the countless people whom he would call and who would soon clutter up the contacts list on his new phone. But right now his words are stuck in his throat and he can't squeeze them out no matter how many times he clears his throat and coughs into his hand.

The silence drags on and she waits patiently for him to speak, a serene iceberg within the swirling silence surrounding them. He wants to steer clear but there's just something about her that pulls him towards her and he knows that he's headed straight down a one way course to collision. It's time to either sink or swim. 

He knows he can't keep quiet any longer and chokes out hesitantly, _I just... wanted to keep the call log, y'know._

He hears the sharp intake of breath at her end of the line and he knows that she knows what he means.

Quietly, _I'm sorry._

Even more quietly, _Yeah, I'm sorry too_ , and there is no hint of the usual wryness in his tone. That's all he says before he snuggles back down into his scarf of silence because he just can't trust his voice not to break if he says anything more.

But she understands, and somehow the silence is suddenly less biting and he begins to feel the life returning to his freezing limbs. It's somehow comforting just hearing her breathing on the phone, knowing that she is staying patiently on the line as they lapse back into what is now a comforting quiet. They stay that way on the phone for a very long time.

====================

The night after Anna watches Tatara's white coffin go up in smoke, she is sitting on her bed staring at the broken fragments of a red marble held gently between her palms when she suddenly realises that she was wrong, wrong, wrong... Tatara hadn't come home, had never come home, and will never come home. And as the tears begin to well up in her eyes and trickle down her cheeks, she wonders whether the silent cry she had heard last night was not from Mikoto's heart but from her own.


End file.
